Music with heart: an interview with Emaline Delapaix & free downloads!

If you’ve not yet been introduced, I would love to introduce you to Emaline Delapaix. She is a Berlin based, Australian, singer-songwriter with a soothing, beautiful voice and an equally beautiful conscience.

Emaline suffered with depression until she became a full-time musician and vegan a few years ago. She loves animals and promotes veganism through her work. She even gives a small percentage of her CD sales to local animal charities! Emaline is a completely independent artist who books her own shows and she’s taught herself to play piano, acoustic guitar and the baby celtic harp.

She lives with her Canadian rescue cat Reece who she considers her best friend and says is “big and red and resembles Garfield and we’ve been together for 8 1/2 years living in Canada and Germany.” She begins each morning with a raw smoothie and she sprouts and has a small indoor/outdoor veggie/herb garden in the warmer months.

Emaline contacted me a while back and offered to give away free downloads of her EP ‘Between Breeding Seasons’ to five of my readers! At the time, I was swamped with uni and wasn’t posting on here too much, but now that I’m back and my lovely readers are back (thank you :) ), it is time!

If you’d like to get Emaline Delapaix’s free music download, please let me know in the comments below (just write something like “I’d love a free download, please!”) and I’ll choose the winners (not sure how yet, might just end up pulling names out of a hat) and let the winners know by email within about a week or so. In the meantime, please check out this interview I had with the lovely Emaline below.

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What inspired you to start creating your own music?

Since I was a small child I knew I would sing and creating music just seemed to come naturally from that, from humming tunes and eventually making songs up on anything I could get my hands on. Music has also been a kind of therapy to me. I was ill recently and couldn’t sing for around a month and found myself becoming a bit depressed when I couldn’t sing along to songs. I found this very surprising and it just confirmed my belief that music heals and comforts in times of need.

When and why did you become a vegan?

I’ve been vegetarian since 2004 and thought about doing it for years but simply wasn’t awake yet. I became vegan in 2010 but fell off the wagon back to vegetarianism until 2011 when I went back and that’s where I am staying. I do not want to contribute to the suffering of animals, it’s as simple as that.

Why, as a musician, have you chosen to be so outspoken about your veganism? Why do you incorporate it into your image?

Everything I do/say/sing about in my music is part of me and Veganism is part of who I am and how I choose to live my life. If I can educate someone about the reality behind consuming animal products and the cruelty involved so they may think twice than why not? This is the least I can do as far as I am concerned if I have an audience there open to my ideas and thoughts. I am also open about my struggle with depression as well as my love of travel. These are parts of me that I want to share with people.

It makes a lot of sense to me that not being able to express herself creatively would bring her down. I’m glad she found her calling!

http://www.facebook.com/emalinedelapaixmusic Emaline Delapaix

That’s cool that you understand. I see that you’re in Zurich. I will be playing first ever show there on 6th June at Huusma. If you’re vegan, do you recommend a nice affordable vegan cafe/restaurant to visit? Can’t wait!

http://www.globetrottinginheels.com/ Elisa

Hi Emaline – I’m not vegan, but I do know a couple of afforadble vegan places. One is the Vegelateria: http://vegelateria.ch/
And the other is Schnägg, which is mostly soups, salads and sandwiches for quick lunches and such: http://www.xn--schngg-eua.ch/de/
There are two locations very close to the main station.